Another word for difficult

difficult Synonyms

difficult

modif.

Hard to achieve
laborious, hard, arduous, strenuous, demanding, exacting, hard-won, stiff, heavy, painful, labored, trying, titanic, bothersome, troublesome, burdensome, backbreaking, not easy, wearisome, onerous, attended by obstacles, rigorous, Herculean, requiring much effort, Gargantuan, uphill, Sisyphean, challenging, taxing, formidable, ambitious, intricate, irksome, vexatious, tedious, immense, exhausting, grueling, stressful, unyielding, tricky, delicate, ticklish, beyond one's ability, tough*, heavy*, man-sized*, no picnic*, hairy*, sticky*; see also onerous, severe 1.
Antonyms easy*, manageable, light.
Hard to understand
intricate, involved, perplexing, abstruse, abstract, tricky, hard, obscure, complex, complicated, knotty, thorny, troublesome, obstinate, puzzling, mysterious, mystifying, subtle, confusing, bewildering, dark, confounding, esoteric, unclear, mystical, tangled, hard to explain, hard to solve, entangled, profound, vexing, baffling, enmeshed, rambling, loose, meandering, trackless, inexplicable, pathless, awkward, digressive, turgid, deep, stubborn, labyrinthine, hidden, formidable, enigmatic, occult, paradoxical, incomprehensible, unintelligible, inscrutable, inexplicable, unanswerable, not understandable, unsolvable, unfathomable, concealed, unaccountable, ambiguous, equivocal, metaphysical, inconceivable, recondite, overtechnical, unknown, steep*, tough*, over one's head*, beyond one's depth*, too deep*, beyond one's comprehension, not making sense, Greek to*, past comprehension; see also obscure 1, 3.
Antonyms simple, clear*, easy.
Hard to deal with or manage
unmanageable, perverse, unaccommodating, finicky; see careful, contrary 4, irritable, obstinate.

hard, in this comparison, is the simple and general word for whatever demands great physical or mental effort hard work, a hard problem; difficult applies especially to that which requires great skill, intelligence, tact, etc. rather than physical labor a difficult situation; a difficult book; arduous implies the need for diligent, protracted effort the arduous fight ahead of us; laborious suggests long, wearisome toil the laborious task of picking fruit

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WEBSTER’S NEW WORLD® ROGET’S A-Z THESAURUS by Charlton Laird and the editors of Webster’s New World dictionaries. Copyright © 1999 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.